Kodi warning - Live streaming users to be threatened with of 10 years in prison

DOWNLOAD CRACKDOWN: New laws could see copyright infringers hit with 10 year prison sentences

The crackdown on illegal Kodi users continues, with those who flout piracy laws to soon be threatened with prison sentences.

At least that’s according to a new campaign page by the Open Rights Group - a digital campaigning organisation that aims to protect the rights to privacy and free speech online.

The Open Rights Group (ORG) wants to change the Government’s Digital Economy Bill in order to make it more specific to current use cases.

It claims that the current Bill features too much ambiguous phrasing that could see widespread abuse of intellectual property laws by “copyright trolls.”

If it gets its way, the Government’s proposed Bill could be used to criminalise all copyright infringements, with the threat of up to 10 year prison sentences available.

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Although the Government wants to use the Bill to increase the penalties for those running websites that allow copyright-protected materials to be readily downloaded, the severe punishments wouldn’t be limited to the worst offenders.

Instead, anyone who breaches copyright laws, intentionally or not, could fall foul of the Bill and face prosecution.

Speaking in an official blog post, the ORG has claimed the Digital Economy Bill is currently “threatening ordinary internet users”.

It added that its non-specific wording means "The offence criminalises infringements where money hasn’t been paid or there is a “risk of loss” - which means nearly anything published online without permission could attract a jail sentence.”

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Highlighting just how broad a field this is, it added: ”It could be file sharing, or reusing a Disney character in a gif.”

The ORG argues that if the potential jail sentence for copyright infringements is increased to 10 years, more users could be frightened into paying for content, even if they have done nothing wrong.

What’s more, there is a risk that given the difficult nature of tracking illegal downloads, small time offenders could be hit with sizeable sentences in order to set an example to the masses.

According to the Open Rights Group, the Government has been warned twice that this ambiguous phrasing could help copyright trolls - legal firms that send out legal warning letters to people suspected of unauthorised downloading of copyright works.

With these firms sending mail-out warnings in a scattershot approach, they regularly target those who have never downloaded any infringing material.

However, with threats of court action unless they pay significant sums, many are fooled into paying for something they haven’t done.

According to the ORG, if the Digital Economy Bill passes unchanged, these trolls will be able to send out warning letters threatening users with 10 years imprisonment, increase their chance of success when targeting people with these mass emails.

The move comes as further measures are introduced to crack down on illegal Kodi boxes.

Although Kodi’s content services are completely legal, some users have started using them alongside torrent-based plug ins in order to access illegally pirated content.

Recently, the Premier League gained the right to block entire servers found to be distributing content illegally.